Oh, of course Chicksands was the popular man, the greatest power in the county, looked up to, and listened to by everybody.

The Squire knew very well that he himself was ostracized, even hated; that there had been general chuckling in the neighbourhood over his rough handling by the County Committee, and that it would please a good many people to see all his woods commandeered and 'cut clean.' Six months before, his inborn pugnacity would only have amused itself with the situation.

He was a rebel and a litigant by nature.
Smooth waters had never attracted him.
Yet now--though he would never have admitted it--he was often conscious of a flagging will and a depressed spirit.

The loneliness of his life, due entirely to himself, had, during Elizabeth Bremerton's absence, begun sharply to find him out.

He had no true fatherly relation with any of his children.